SoylentNews

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/08/charter-can-charge-online-video-sites-for-network-connections-court-rules/

Charter can charge Netflix and other online video streaming services for network interconnection despite a merger condition prohibiting the practice, a federal appeals court ruled today.

The ruling by the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit overturns two merger conditions that the Obama administration imposed on Charter when it bought Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks in 2016. The FCC under Chairman Ajit Pai did not defend the merits of the merger conditions in court, paving the way for today's ruling. The case was decided in a 2-1 vote by a panel of three DC Circuit judges.

[...] The case turned largely on the question of whether the consumers who sued had standing to challenge the conditions. Even if other factors besides interconnection contributed to the price increases, "the subscribers need not show that prohibiting paid interconnection agreements caused the entirety of the price increases, or even that it caused price increases of some specific amount," judges wrote. "For standing purposes, even a small financial injury is enough, and the consumers have shown a substantial likelihood that their bills are higher because of the prohibition on paid interconnection agreements."

[...] Charter told the FCC in a filing that it doesn't "currently" plan to impose data caps or charge video providers for interconnection, but the company wants the prohibitions lifted because they "put Charter at a competitive disadvantage" and "forc[e] Charter to run its network based on arbitrary merger conditions instead of market conditions." Charter's filing also claimed that broadband plans with data caps are "often popular" with consumers.

[...] Wood [VP of policy at consumer-advocacy group Free Press] pointed to a Free Press filing to the FCC that he said shows "Charter was delivering better value and getting better financial results for itself than any other big wired ISP. So the notion that either Charter or its customers have suffered from the conditions is a joke, as is any claim by the litigants that unconditioned mergers and monopolies are somehow better for people."

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

ATM Hackers Have Picked Up Some Clever New Tricks:

At last week's Black Hat and Defcon security conferences, researchers dug through recent evolutions in ATM hacking. Criminals have increasingly tuned their malware to manipulate even niche proprietary bank software to cash out ATMs, while still incorporating the best of the classics—including uncovering new remote attacks to target specific ATMs.

During Black Hat, Kevin Perlow, the technical threat intelligence team lead at a large, private financial institution, analyzed two cash-out tactics that represent different current approaches to jackpotting. One looked at the ATM malware known as INJX_Pure, first seen in spring 2019. INJX_Pure manipulates both the eXtensions for Financial Services (XFS) interface—which supports basic features on an ATM, like running and coordinating the PIN pad, card reader, and cash dispenser—and a bank's proprietary software together to cause jackpotting.

[...] Perlow also looked at FASTCash malware, used in jackpotting campaigns that the Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency attributed to North Korean hackers in October 2018. North Korea has used the malware to cash out tens of millions of dollars around the world, which coordinated groups of money mules then collect and launder. FASTCash targets not the ATMs themselves but a financial card transaction standard known as ISO-8583. The malware infects software running on what are known as "payment switches," finance infrastructure devices that run systems responsible for tracking and reconciling information from ATMs and responses from banks. By infecting one of these switches rather than attacking an individual ATM, FASTCash attacks can coordinate cash-outs from dozens of ATMs at once.

"If you can do this, then you no longer have to put malware on 500 ATMs," Perlow says. "That's the advantage, why it’s so clever."

[...] "What has fundamentally changed between when Barnaby Jack presented and now?" Red Balloon's Cui says. "The same types of attacks that would have worked against laptops and laptop operating systems 15 years ago largely wouldn't work now. We've leveled up. So why is it that the machine that holds the money has not evolved? That’s incredible to me."

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/08/fcc-beats-cities-in-court-helping-carriers-avoid-2-billion-in-local-5g-fees/

The Federal Communications Commission has defeated dozens of cities in court, with judges ruling that the FCC can preempt local fees and regulations imposed on wireless carriers deploying 5G networks. The ruling is good news for AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile.

The FCC voted to preempt cities and towns in September 2018, saying the move would prevent local governments from charging wireless carriers about $2 billion worth of fees over five years related to deployment of wireless equipment such as small cells. That's less than 1 percent of the estimated $275 billion that the FCC said carriers would have to spend to deploy 5G small cells throughout the United States.

Cities promptly sued the FCC, but a ruling issued [Wednesday] by the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit went mostly in the FCC's favor. It wasn't a complete victory for the FCC, though, as judges overturned a portion of the FCC ruling that limited the kinds of aesthetic requirements cities and towns can impose on carrier deployments.

"The court rightly affirmed the FCC's efforts to ensure that infrastructure deployment critical to 5G... is not impeded by exorbitant fees imposed by state and local governments, undue delays in local permitting, and unreasonable barriers to pole access," FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said, calling the court decision "a massive victory for US leadership in 5G, our nation's economy, and American consumers."

On the losing side were localities including Portland, Oregon; San Francisco; New York City; Los Angeles; Boston; Chicago; Washington, DC; Las Vegas; Philadelphia; Austin, Texas; and others.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for RandomFactor:

Jack Daniel’s-Maker Suffers REvil Ransomware Breach:

The Jack Daniel’s-maker has released few details about the incident but claimed it successfully prevented attackers from encrypting its files.

“We are working closely with law enforcement, as well as world class third-party data security experts, to mitigate and resolve this situation as soon as possible,” it added in a brief statement. “There are no active negotiations.”

However, as is often the case, the attackers appear to have taken extra steps to force a ransom payment from the company. They told Bloomberg that 1TB of corporate data is now in their hands and it will most likely be leaked online in batches to turn up the pressure on the Louisville, Kentucky-headquartered firm.

The group apparently responsible for this attack is Sodinokibi (REvil), which, like Maze and other gangs, maintains a dedicated leak site to post stolen data on.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Appeals court ruling for Qualcomm "a victory of theory over facts":

A federal appeals court has tossed out a lower court ruling that Qualcomm abused its dominance of the modem chip market to force customers to pay inflated royalties for its patent portfolio. The appeals court forcefully rejected Judge Lucy Koh's 2019 analysis of Qualcomm's business practices and held that Qualcomm's behavior was merely "hypercompetitive," not anticompetitive.

The two rulings could not have been more different. In last year's 233-page ruling, Judge Koh explained Qualcomm's business practices in so much detail that it took us more than 3,500 words just to summarize her findings. This week's ruling by the Ninth Circuit Appeals Court was shorter—56 pages—and more theoretical.

The appeals court acknowledged that "from 2006 to 2016, Qualcomm possessed monopoly power in the CDMA modem chip market, including over 90% of market share." However, the court found that the Federal Trade Commission—which brought the lawsuit against Qualcomm—had failed to prove that Qualcomm had abused that power. The court reasoned that Qualcomm's licensing practices were simply designed to maximize the company's revenue—and that in itself isn't illegal.

"The plaintiff must show that diminished consumer choices and increased prices are the result of a less competitive market due to either artificial restraints or predatory and exclusionary conduct," the appeals court ruled.

Judge Koh thought the FTC had demonstrated predatory and exclusionary conduct. She described how Qualcomm threatened to abruptly cut off the modem chip supply of smartphone makers who challenged Qualcomm's high patent rates. She found Qualcomm structured deals with Apple, Samsung, LG, and other smartphone vendors to discourage them from doing business with other chipmakers. She cited internal documents in which Qualcomm executives acknowledged the anticompetitive impact of these policies.

But three judges from the Ninth Circuit Appeals Court ignored much of this evidence and waved the rest away.

"I would describe it as a victory of theory over facts," said Tim Wu, a legal scholar at Columbia University. Wu told Ars that the Ninth Circuit showed "an indifference to the actual effects" of Qualcomm's conduct.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Cheese: New insights into an age-old food:

The analysis provided new insights into the microorganisms found in cheese, the links between microorganisms and specific desirable and undesirable flavors and the arsenal of antimicrobials that starters and other cheese microorganisms produce to naturally preserve cheese. The study also provides an intriguing insight into the battle between phage (viruses that infect bacteria) and cheese microorganisms, and associated anti-phage countermeasures.

[...] Scientists have been studying these microorganisms and their activities since the 19th century and eventually began to try to better control the process in some instances through the conscious addition of specific microorganisms, known as "starters," to start the cheesemaking process. Studies have also focused on trying to identify and control the growth of other, undesirable, microorganisms that contribute to off-flavors or food poisoning as well as phage, which are viruses that can attack and kill starters.

[...] "This study has the potential to be of tremendous value to the cheese industry. A better understanding of the microbiology involved can lead to the better harnessing of microbes that can positively impact on flavor and other qualities. This could allow the most desirable qualities of artisanally-produced cheeses to be made available to even wider markets. It also has broader implications for the whole fermented food field where the same technologies can be employed in a similar way and scale," explains Professor Paul Cotter.

Video: How milk becomes cheese

Journal Reference:
Aaron M. Walsh, Guerrino Macori, Kieran N. Kilcawley, et al. Meta-analysis of cheese microbiomes highlights contributions to multiple aspects of quality, Nature Food (DOI: 10.1038/s43016-020-0129-3)

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Simulations show lander exhaust could cloud studies of lunar ices:

A new study led by scientists at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, shows that exhaust from a mid-sized lunar lander can quickly spread around the Moon and potentially contaminate scientifically vital ices at the lunar poles.

Computer simulations of water vapor emitted by a 2,650-pound (1,200-kilogram) lander—about a quarter of the dry mass of the Apollo Lunar Module—touching down near the Moon's south pole showed exhaust takes only a few hours to disperse around the entire Moon. From 30% to 40% of the vapor persisted in the lunar atmosphere and surface two months later, and roughly 20% would ultimately freeze out near the poles a few months after that.

Those results, published online Aug. 11 in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, show that researchers' interest in studying the native ices in the Moon's poleward craters—ices that may date back several billion years—will need to be carefully considered during increased efforts to return humans to the Moon.

[...] "The interesting thing about Parvathy's work is that it shows very well that the effect, while small and temporary, is global," said Dana Hurley, a planetary scientist at APL and coauthor on the study.

Space organizations can expect volatile gases to significantly coat the lunar surface at well over 60 miles (100 kilometers) from the landing site.

The residue exhaust does eventually fade away, but Hurley points out that current plans for human lunar exploration mean it will happen more frequently and with much heavier landers.

"The results of this study drive the critical need to conduct the research we want to do about the lunar atmosphere and volatile deposits while they are relatively pristine," Hurley said.

Journal Reference:
Parvathy Prem, Dana M. Hurley, David B. Goldstein, et al. The Evolution of a Spacecraft‐Generated Lunar Exosphere, Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets (DOI: 10.1029/2020JE006464)

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Fastest star ever seen is moving at 8% the speed of light:

In the center of our galaxy, hundreds of stars closely orbit a supermassive black hole. Most of these stars have large enough orbits that their motion is described by Newtonian gravity and Kepler's laws of motion. But a few orbit so closely that their orbits can only be accurately described by Einstein's theory of general relativity. The star with the smallest orbit is known as S62. Its closest approach to the black hole has it moving more than 8% of light speed.

[...] For years, S2 was thought to be the closest star to SgrA*, but then S62 was discovered. As a team recently discovered, it's a star about twice as massive as the sun that orbits the black hole every 10 years. By their calculations, at the closest approach, its speed approaches 8% of the speed of light. That's so fast that time dilation comes into play. An hour at S62 would last about 100 Earth minutes.

Because of its proximity to SgrA*, S62 doesn't follow a Keplerian orbit. Rather than being a simple ellipse, it follows a spirograph motion by which its orbit precesses about 10 degrees with each cycle. This kind of relativistic precession was first observed with the orbit of Mercury, but only as a small effect.

Journal Reference:
Florian Peißker, Andreas Eckart, and Marzieh Parsa. S62 on a 9.9 yr Orbit around SgrA* - IOPscience, The Astrophysical Journal (2020) (DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/ab5afd)

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for carny:

Critical Flaws in WordPress Quiz Plugin Allow Site Takeover:

A plugin that is designed to add quizzes and surveys to WordPress websites has patched two critical vulnerabilities. The flaws can be exploited by remote, unauthenticated attackers to launch varying attacks – including fully taking over vulnerable websites.

The plugin, Quiz and Survey Master, is actively installed on over 30,000 websites. The two critical flaws discovered by researchers include an arbitrary file-upload vulnerability, ranking 10 out of 10 on the CVSS scale; as well as an unauthenticated arbitrary file deletion error, ranking 9.9 out of 10. A patch is available for both issues in version 7.0.1 of the plugin, said the researchers with Wordfence who discovered the flaws, in a Thursday post.

"The unauthenticated arbitrary file-deletion vulnerability that was present in the plugin is pretty significant," Chloe Chamberland, threat analyst with Wordfence, told Threatpost. "Any of the 30,000 sites running the plugin are subject to any file being deleted (granted they are running a vulnerable version), which includes the wp-config.php file, by unauthenticated site users."

[...] Researchers discovered the flaws on July 17, and after various unsuccessful attempts to contact the QSM plugin team, finally reached out to the plugin's parent company, ExpressTech on Aug. 1. A patch was released on Aug. 5 in version 7.0.1. The CVE assignments for both flaws are still pending, researchers said.

"We highly recommend updating to version 7.0.1 immediately to keep your site protected against any attacks attempting to exploit this vulnerability," said researchers.

Also at www.youtube.com

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for guy_:

German watchdog launches new Amazon investigation:

Germany's anti-trust authority has launched a new investigation into Amazon's relationship with third-party traders selling on its site, its head was quoted as saying on Sunday.

"We are currently investigating whether and how Amazon influences how traders set prices on the marketplace," Andreas Mundt, President of the Federal Cartel Office, told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung daily.

[...] "Amazon must not be a controller of prices," he said, adding that Amazon had responded to his office's requests for information and those statements were now being evaluated.

Amazon could not immediately be reached for comment.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

ProBeat: Microsoft's Surface Duo is dead on arrival, regardless of price

Microsoft this week pulled back the curtain on the Surface Duo's price and availability: 128GB for $1,400 and 256GB for $1,500, both shipping on September 10. Too bad the dual-screen Android device is dead on arrival.

The price tag is tough to swallow, especially during a pandemic. After all, 2020 is seeing a resurgence in good, cheap phones. Most notably, Apple launched a $399 iPhone SE, to which Google responded with a $349 Pixel 4a. But if you are interested in a folding phone, a grand and a half is not going to be the deal breaker, especially given the starting prices of this year's Galaxy Z Flip ($1,380), Galazy Z Flip 5G ($1,450), Motorola Razr ($1,500), and Huawei Mate Xs (€2,499). The real problem is what you get, or rather don't get, for the price.

See also: Duo-take: Here's what the media is saying about Surface Duo

Previously: Microsoft Demonstrates Dual-Screen Device Running Android Apps, Announces Windows 10X

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Micron Spills on GDDR6X: PAM4 Signaling For Higher Rates, Coming to NVIDIA's RTX 3090

It would seem that Micron this morning has accidentally spilled the beans on the future of graphics card memory technologies – and outed one of NVIDIA's next-generation RTX video cards in the process. In a technical brief that was posted to their website, dubbed "The Demand for Ultra-Bandwidth Solutions", Micron detailed their portfolio of high-bandwidth memory technologies and the market needs for them. Included in this brief was information on the previously-unannounced GDDR6X memory technology, as well as some information on what seems to be the first card to use it, NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 3090.

[...] At any rate, as this is a market overview rather than a technical deep dive, the details on GDDR6X are slim. The document links to another, still-unpublished document, "Doubling I/O Performance with PAM4: Micron Innovates GDDR6X to Accelerate Graphics Memory", that would presumably contain further details on GDDR6X. None the less, even this high-level overview gives us a basic idea of what Micron has in store for later this year.

The key innovation for GDDR6X appears to be that Micron is moving from using POD135 coding on the memory bus – a binary (two state) coding format – to four state coding in the form of Pulse-Amplitude Modulation 4 (PAM4). In short, Micron would be doubling the number of signal states in the GDDR6X memory bus, allowing it to transmit twice as much data per clock.

[...] According to Micron's brief, they're expecting to get GDDR6X to 21Gbps/pin, at least to start with. This is a far cry from doubling GDDR6's existing 16Gbps/pin rate, but it's also a data rate that would be grounded in the limitations of PAM4 and DRAM. PAM4 itself is easier to achieve than binary coding at the same total data rate, but having to accurately determine four states instead of two is conversely a harder task. So a smaller jump isn't too surprising.

The leaked Ampere-based RTX 3090 seems to be Nvidia's attempt to compete with AMD's upcoming RDNA2 ("Big Navi") GPUs without lowering the price of the usual high-end "Titan" GPU (Titan RTX launched at $2,499). Here are some of the latest leaks for the RTX 30 "Ampere" GPU lineup.

Also at Guru3D and Wccftech.

Previously: GDDR5X Standard Finalized by JEDEC
SK Hynix to Begin Shipping GDDR6 Memory in Early 2018
Samsung Announces Mass Production of GDDR6 SDRAM

Related: PCIe 6.0 Announced for 2021: Doubles Bandwidth Yet Again (uses PAM4)

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Sounds of action: Using ears, not just eyes, improves robot perception: Carnegie Mellon builds dataset capturing interaction of sound, action, vision:

People rarely use just one sense to understand the world, but robots usually only rely on vision and, increasingly, touch. Carnegie Mellon University researchers find that robot perception could improve markedly by adding another sense: hearing.

In what they say is the first large-scale study of the interactions between sound and robotic action, researchers at CMU's Robotics Institute found that sounds could help a robot differentiate between objects, such as a metal screwdriver and a metal wrench. Hearing also could help robots determine what type of action caused a sound and help them use sounds to predict the physical properties of new objects.

[...] To perform their study, the researchers created a large dataset, simultaneously recording video and audio of 60 common objects -- such as toy blocks, hand tools, shoes, apples and tennis balls -- as they slid or rolled around a tray and crashed into its sides. They have since released this dataset, cataloging 15,000 interactions, for use by other researchers.

The team captured these interactions using an experimental apparatus they called Tilt-Bot -- a square tray attached to the arm of a Sawyer robot. It was an efficient way to build a large dataset; they could place an object in the tray and let Sawyer spend a few hours moving the tray in random directions with varying levels of tilt as cameras and microphones recorded each action.

YouTube video: Tilt-Bot in Action

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Black silicon photodetector breaks the 100% efficiency limit:

Aalto University researchers have developed a black silicon photodetector that has reached above 130% efficiency. Thus, for the first time, a photovoltaic device has exceeded the 100% limit, which has earlier been considered as the theoretical maximum for external quantum efficiency.

"When we saw the results, we could hardly believe our eyes. Straight away we wanted to verify the results by independent measurements," says Prof. Hele Savin, head of the Electron Physics research group at Aalto University.

The independent measurements were carried out by the German National Metrology Institute, Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB), which is known to provide the most accurate and reliable measurement services in Europe.

Head of the PTB Laboratory of Detector Radiometry, Dr. Lutz Werner comments, "After seeing the results, I instantly realized that this is a significant breakthrough—and at the same time, a much-welcomed step forward for us metrologists dreaming of higher sensitivities."

[...] The results leading to the record efficiency has been accepted for publication in Physical Review Letters in an article titled "Black-silicon ultraviolet photodiodes achieve external quantum efficiency above 130%."

Garin et al. Black-silicon ultraviolet photodiodes achieve external quantum efficiency above 130%, Physical Review Letters (2020). arxiv.org/abs/1907.13397

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

This online calculator can predict your stroke risk:

The study found that stroke risk increased consistently with metabolic syndrome[*] severity even in patients without diabetes. Doctors can use this information -- and a scoring tool developed by a UVA Children's pediatrician and his collaborator at the University of Florida -- to identify patients at risk and help them reduce that risk.

"We had previously shown that the severity of metabolic syndrome was linked to future coronary heart disease and type 2 diabetes," said UVA's Mark DeBoer, MD. "This study showed further links to future ischemic strokes."

DeBoer developed the scoring tool, an online calculator to assess the severity of metabolic syndrome, with Matthew J. Gurka, PhD, of the Department of Health Outcomes and Biomedical Informatics at the University of Florida, Gainesville. The tool is available for free at https://metscalc.org/.

[...] The overall relationship between metabolic syndrome severity and stroke risk was clear, however. And this suggests people with metabolic syndrome can make lifestyle changes to reduce that risk. Losing weight, exercising more, choosing healthy foods -- all can help address metabolic syndrome and its harmful effects.

DeBoer hopes that the tool he and Gurka developed will help doctors guide patients as they seek to reduce their stroke risk and improve their health and well-being.

"In case there are still individuals out there debating whether to start exercising or eating a healthier diet," DeBoer said, "this study provides another wake-up call to motivate us all toward lifestyle changes."

[*] Metabolic syndrome on Wikipedia:

Metabolic syndrome is a clustering of at least three of the five following medical conditions: abdominal obesity, high blood pressure, high blood sugar, high serum triglycerides, and low serum high-density lipoprotein (HDL).

[...] In the U.S., about 25% of the adult population has metabolic syndrome, a proportion increasing with age

Journal Reference:
Risk of Ischemic Stroke Increases Over the Spectrum of Metabolic Syndrome Severity, Stroke (DOI: 10.1161/STROKEAHA.120.028944)

Original Submission